Yikes, what can you say about the Browns? Things are getting pretty ugly in Cleveland, following a 30-6 loss to the Bears that left the team having been outscored 61-9 over the past 2 weeks. QB Derek Anderson was brutal again, tossing 2 picks and turning the ball over another time on a botched snap. Amidst Cleveland's myriad woes, it might be easy to write off Anderson's performance so far in 2009 as merely one of many breakdowns, but that's understating just how awful Anderson has been... Through 8 games, here are the worst passer-rating performances by a QB in a season since 1960:

That's right, Eric Mangini benched Brady Quinn in Week 3 so he could receive the 14th-worst 1st-half quarterbacking performance in almost 50 years (!) from Anderson. And keep in mind that passer ratings in the modern game are almost always significantly higher than they were in the sixties and early seventies, since today's defenses are greatly restricted in what they can do when trying to stop receivers from getting open and/or catching the ball. Not since another Cleveland quarterback, Mike Phipps, posted a 27.7 rating in 1975 has a QB opened the season as badly as Anderson this year, and among the bottom 25 half-seasons listed above, Anderson's '09 and Heath Shuler's 1994 are the only ones to come after 1980. You can be sure that this is not the kind of history the Browns wanted to make in 2009.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 10:16 am and is filed under Best/Worst Ever, PI Finds.
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It became public a few weeks ago that if Brady Quinn plays 70% of Cleveland's snaps, he qualifies for an $11 million roster bonus.

Clearly, upper management in Cleveland is willingly letting Anderson put up historically awful numbers in order to save money on Quinn. Now that that threshold cannot be reached, don't be surprised to see Quinn back at the helm after Cleveland's bye this week.

Andy, Terry Bradshaw was the perfect QB-do just enough in the reg. season to get into the po's, and then LEAD YOUR TEAM to playoff success. Bradshaw did this better than anyone. A little trivia-no QB had to lead their team to more points to win a S.B. game than Bradshaw. Another way to say it-no defense gave up more points and still won the S.B. than Pittsburgh (35-31 over Dallas). Here's 1 other-Bradshaw had to lead his O to TD's in the 4th quarter of all 4 of his S.B.'s to either produce a comeback win or to seal the deal. He was Mr. Clutch.

Apparently, the answer at this point is "neither." Even after last year, Anderson compared to guys like Scott Mitchell and Gus Frerotte. But after this year, eesh. Quinn is yet to grab the reins at the start to his season (over 60% comp while under 5.5 ypa) compares to guys in captain checkdown mode like Klingler, Shuler, and Kanell. But given Anderson's play, well, at this point, you have to see whether Quinn can put any points on the board.

I find it facinating that Joe Kapp had the worst rating for the first 8 games. Just one year before he had QB'ed the Vikings to the SB. And in one game, against the defending NFL champion Colts (though losers in the SB), he threw 7 TD's in one game. Amazing the variety of performance that can come out of a player, even though he left a strong team to a really poor one. And whom did he succeed? Mike Taliaferro who also appears on the list

Kapp was basically a one-year wonder with the Vikings in 69, and even then the Viks won primarily with the Purple People Eaters defense. Kansas City popped Kapp and Viks balloon in the Super Bowl and Kapp was bascially done after that.

Re: Bradshaw in 69. That was Terry's rookie season and he was thrown to the lions as the first pick in the draft on a bad Steeler team (they went 1-13 the previous year). Bradshaw came from a small school, and it really took most QBs three to four years to adapt to the NFL game back then. Terry's early years with Steelers were very tough; Noll was constantly pulling in favor of Terry Hanratty or Joe Gilliam, and leaving Bradshaw to twist in the wind. Bradshaw never forgave Noll for this, and their relationship was very icy for a long time. Didn't matter much on the field as the decade went along, though.

For Biohh--you're points are well taken. I would say that Kapp had an ok year in 1968 and one in which the Vikes went to the playoffs, only to lose a tough game to the Colts. Yes , defense "carried" the Vikes that year, but my point was the variety of performance from players. Kapp could have soured at QB with the Vikes even with a good team. He goes to NE, and he really does poorly. Is it him? Is it the team? Certainly it is some of both. I was merely citing a vast discrepancy in performance from one year to the next. Just FYI 1969 stats 1726 yards passing; 19 TD's to 13 int.'s; avg/completion--14.4. Had highest TD %age for league (8.0). QB rating of 78.5 (6th). For 1970--1104 yrds passing; 3 TD's to 17 int's; avg.completion--11.3; only 1.8 %age for TDS's to attempts; overall QB rating of 32.6 (oh how the mighty fell!). Agsin, just interesting about performance variability.

TT, your points are well taken as well. Clearly Kapp's year to year performance from 69 to 70 is a reflection, at least in part,of the quality of the teama that he was on; but I would suggest that a large part of this monumental decline was due to Kapp's individual play and his somewhat unique qualities as QB. I don't know if you had a chance to see JK play, but I was around back then (god I'm old) and Kapp was a very unpolished QB, even for the era. In fact he was proud of this: SI ran a three part bio of Kapp in the off-season in 1970 and in this bio JK played up his machismo and leadership ability, and denigrated his athleticism and QB skills. I would suggest that if you took Len Dawson off the 69 Chiefs and deposited him on 70 Pats, his QB rating and overall performance would decline, but nowhere near as dramatically as Kapp's did.

I am old too! Saw Joe Kapp play alot in that notable 1969 season. He was fairly unpolished as a passer though like Bill Kilmer, somehow could deliver. He did have several good years in the CFL which probably helped his NFL transition. Stil, he was no Johnny U. And I think that the comparison of Len Dawson going to New England would have definitely shown a fall off, just not near enough. Interesting while he have comparisons is how Gary Cuozzo did after Kapp left. He was definitely more polished, and the Viking passing game had no falloff. Their regular season performance was not much different than the 1969 year either.

One thing that seems odd is the distribution over time of these poor performances. Here is the distribution by decade.

1960s: 9
1970s: 12
1980s: 2
1990s: 1
2000s: 1 so far

Perhaps QBs were left in for more games in the past than modern QBs. Perhaps free agency means that if a guy is so horrible, you find some talent somewhere else and pay for it (unless you are Cleveland).

GNM: I'm guessing it has more to do with changes to rules that affect passing. The Mel Blount rule (restricting DBs manhandling receivers) happened in... 1978? Since then, average passer ratings have been much higher.

To put it mildly. Brian Griese is rated far ahead of John Unitas by career rating.

The NFL passer rating system is awful to begin with -- it is so biased towards high completion percentage that a QB can increase his rating by completing passes that lose yardage.

So, in any era, it boosts the short-throwers and penalizes the long-throwers (say Len Dawson and Bob Griese v Joe Namath and John Unitas).

Add to that the changes in the rules that greatly increased average completion pct (which was about 50% in the '60s and '70s) and improved the TD-pick ratios (about 1 to 1 back in them olden days), and which brought in the very high completion pct West Coast offense, and it is *very* highly biased towards today's QB and against the pre-1980 QBs -- especially so against the long-throwing greats of the past.

Completion percentage goes up about 1 point every 5 years, and passer rating goes up about 1 point every 3 years. One could use that simple formula to era adjust passer ratings, which gives more reasonable-feeling to cross-era numbers. For instance, adjusting passer rating to a year 2000 standard
:
Graham: 102.7
Young: 99.4
Montana: 96.7
Manning: 94.1
Staubach: 91.9
Brady: 91.2
Tarkenton: 90.3
Unitas: 89.7
Marino: 89.3
Brees: 88.9
Favre: 86.0
Elway: 83.0
Griese: 81.7
Bradshaw: 78.5
Dilfer: 70.0
Anderson: 67.2
:
But I do agree that passer rating isn't terribly valuable as a metric, even after adjusting.
Peyton and Brian, in case it wasn't clear. Eli would be 75.5 and Bob would be 85.7